English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."
David Pountney and his design team - Raimund Bauer (sets), Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes), Fabrice Kebour (lighting) - have clearly ‘had a ball’ in mounting this Un ballo in maschera, the second part of WNO’s Verdi trilogy and which forms part of a spring season focusing on what Pountney describes as the “profound and mysterious issue of Monarchy”.
The conflict between private passions and public obligations is currently also exercising English Touring Opera . Here, though, Pountney seems less interested in his monarch’s regal responsibilities than in his thespian inclinations with the result that both the love triangle which spawns vengeful jealousy and the political conspiracy with which the former becomes entwined, with tragic consequences, are overshadowed by theatrical conceits, with Riccardo more stage director than sovereign potentate. In Un ballo Verdi balances private intimacy with public spectacle, but Pountney, Bauer and Lecca give us not so much grandeur as gothic Grand Guignol grotesquery.
I should start, though, by saying that musical values and achievements are very high indeed in this production, and that however diverting (and, admittedly, at times entertaining) the games and japes in which Pountney indulges, the director makes space for Verdi’s beautiful score to breathe. Carlo Rizzi presides in the pit and masterfully overseas a performance characterised by strongly defined and delineated musical moods and strokes. A whispered pianissimo at the start of the overture immediately established a conspiratorial air, and the tautness of the gruff fugato which conjures the schemers’ intriguing tightened the screw further. Spine-twitching gun-shot chords initiated Act 1 Scene 2, but such hyperbolic gestures were complemented by melodic shaping of touching beauty; the aching cello obbligato which accompanies Amelia’s melancholy aria ‘Morrò, ma prima in grazia’ in Act 3 typified the prevailing expressive eloquence, and was matched by the cor anglais’ haunting commentary during Amelia’s grand scena in Act 2. This was some of the best orchestral playing - stirring colours, pinpoint details, confident ensemble and spot-on tuning - that I have heard from the WNO Orchestra.
Gwyn Hughes Jones (Riccardo), Mary Elizabeth Williams (Amelia). Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
Pountney has reunited the central pair of star-crossed lovers from last year’s production of La forza del destino and tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones and soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams once again exhibit power, stamina and subtlety as Riccardo and Amelia. Though there was some occasional roughness as his voice swelled in its lower regions in Act 1, Hughes Jones relished the more expansive moments of heroic lyricism. He really acted with his voice during the scene at Ulrica’s ‘urban coven’, and ‘Di’ tu se fedele’ sparkled with insouciant recklessness. Hughes Jones’ Italian diction was consistently excellent, and he captured all of the monarch’s presumption, paranoia and impetuousness, though Pountney’s conception deprived the King of true nobility.
This Amelia is a little one-dimensional - not really Williams’ fault as she too is rather pushed to the hinterland by Pountney’s conception - but she can float a phrase glorious and use the gentle edge of her soprano to garner our sympathy and convey emotional realism. Ronald Wood was returning to a role in which he so impressed at Grange Park Opera last summer, and if Wood seemed a little less central to the dramatic thrust of the opera this time round, when able to let Renato’s vengeful energies off the leash in Act 3’s ‘Eri tu che macchiavi quell’anima’, Wood was compelling.
Roland Wood (Renato). Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
Despite such musical luxuries, at times I found Pountney’s concept - or multitude of concepts - somewhat taxing. First, the location. After the Revolutions of 1848, the crowned personages of Europe were understandably twitchy about ensuring that their own heads stayed attached to their shoulders, and when Verdi and his librettist Antonio Somma presented the subject of Gustav III of Sweden’s assassination as the subject for the composer’s next opera the censors were rattled, forcing the duo to relocate the action to colonial Boston. And that’s ‘where’ the opera premiered when seen for the first time in Rome in 1859; it took another seventy-six years for it to find its way home to its Swedish origins, in a production staged in Copenhagen.
Pountney plumps for a Swedish setting - though he retains the characters’ Italian names: why not go the whole hog? - at the time of the assassination of Gustav III, a man he describes as “enthralled by theatre and disguise”. Indeed, this ‘enlightened despot’ who ruled from 1771 to 1792 - when, at a masquerade ball, he was surrounded by five black-cloaked assassins, one of whom cried, “Bon soir, beau masque”, before shooting the King in the back - was a devotee of the arts, and especially the theatre. He established the Music Academy in 1771, the Academy of Painting and Sculptury in 1773, the Academy of Belles Lettres, History and Antiquities in 1786 and the Swedish Academy that same year. A writer of plays himself, Gustave found The Royal Great Theatre/The Royal Opera in 1782.
So, Pountney makes his Gustav a sort of Prospero, directing his own life story - not exactly from the wings, but rather from centre-stage. Throughout, ‘Riccardo’ consults a little leather-bound red book - presumably directorial notes - and the ‘walls’ which form the set are revolved by pronouncedly visible stage-hands. Rows of theatre seats, not unlike those we are nestled in, are placed far stage-right so that the characters can spectate unfolding events. When we reach the gallows scene, these walls are robed in velvet red curtains.
Indeed, our first ‘sighting’ of Riccardo is not seated on his throne, but ‘hiding’ in a black sarcophagus, with a leather-suited Oscar prone in mourning across the state coffin. We might be in Gustav Adolfs Torg Square which houses the Opera House and Jacobs church; or, we might be beside an Italian tomb. The shadow of death is cast across proceedings and there’s no doubting Riccardo’s fate: but, actually, its all a jolly jape - the lid of the ebony casket opens and out climbs Riccardo, alive and kicking, to the playful Oscar’s joy! Sung at this performance by Harriet Eyley (replacing Julie Martin du Theil), this Oscar is Ariel to Riccardo’s Prospero, relishing his master’s machinations and whipping off the wig of the Judge (Gareth Dafydd Morris) who wants to banish Ulrica before racing up to the uppermost window above the square, poking his head through the curtain, and defending the fortune-teller while derisively waggling a grinning, carnivalesque head on a stick. Perhaps Pountney is invoking Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, and the relationship between laughter, sex and death? And, perhaps this isn’t so far-fetched given the opera’s premiere during the Carnival season in Rome, the custom of crowning and then uncrowning a Carnival King, the opera’s tropes of masking and disguise, and the fact that Oscar is a travesti role?
Sara Fulgoni (Ulcrica) with WNO Chorus. Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
Whatever, Ulrica (Sara Fulgoni) herself makes the first of her many - often unscripted - appearances in this opening scene, for Pountney makes the soothsayer a prominent presence, much in the same way that Justina Gringytė’s Preziosilla haunted last year’s La forza. We also meet the conspirators, squashed under the coffin, revealed by the lifting of the black drape; cloaked and masked, they seem to have stepped from the pages of a comic strip and it’s hard to believe that they present a credible threat to Riccardo. The ‘seriousness’ of the drama is further quashed at the end of the opening scene when the Chorus whip off their top hats and tails, and trade them for naval and pirate costumes complete with tricorns and eye-patches. When they essay a conga around the stage we’ve crossed into Gilbert & Sullivan territory.
Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
The gothic excess is pushed to extremes in Act 1 Scene 2. Ulrica is a sort of Madame Blavatsky surrounded by billowing smoke and grim acolytes thrusting fateful fingers-on-sticks and dollar-sloganed tin-cans at gullible punters. Fulgoni doesn’t always surmount the orchestral fabric but she sings with blazing intensity. Later both she and the dark-toned conspirators, Samuel (Jihoon Kim) and Tom (Tristan Hambleton) are whizzed about on a high chair on wheels - is this an allusion to the Throne of State of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost? By the time the top hats have sprouted lycanthropic adornments with flashing red eyes, the acolytes begin stabbing needles into red poppets, and the orange-lit wall niches are filled with skulls, we’ve truly wandered onto a Rocky Horror Show set. In a crowning gesture, in the final scene the Chorus’s elegant evening dress is shed to reveal enough skeletons to seriously rattle the censors; it’s the Day of the Dead, clearly, but the destined corpse doesn’t die. Instead, Riccardo watches as a cipher takes the knife.
Mary Elizabeth Williams (Amelia) and WNO Chorus. Photo credit: Bill Cooper.
It’s almost as if Pountney has presented Verdi’s opera at one remove, allowing the director - or the Swedish King himself - to present his own ballo in maschera of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. Clever stuff, and often intriguing, but occasionally baffling.
Claire Seymour
Verdi: Un ballo in maschera
Riccardo - Gwyn Hughes Jones, Amelia - Mary Elizabeth Williams, Renato - Roland Wood, Oscar - Harriet Eyley, Ulrica - Sara Fulgoni, Judge - Gareth Dafydd Morris, Silvano - Jason Howard, Amelia's Servant - Andrew Irwin, Samuel - Jihoon Kim, Tom - Tristan Hambleton; Director - David Pountney, Conductor - Carlo Rizzi, Set Designer - Raimund Bauer, Costume Designer - Marie-Jeanne Lecca, Lighting Designer - Fabrice Kebour, Choreographer - Michael Spenceley, Associate Director - Robin Tebbutt, Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera.
Birmingham Hippodrome; Wednesday 6th March 2019.